This one is difficult to rate for me. I only had 7 days to read it but it's a book that needs to be savoured. You should take your time with it. So I probably didn't get the full experience. The narrative starts right in the middle of a story that has a long backstory some of which the readers are going to learn during the course of the book. There are also quotes from historical or anthropoligical works from that world at the beginning of chapters. A lot of thought went into the world-building. The chapters switch between the present and the past. While I do like the sense of layers of history that certain places and relationships have due to that I also feel that this narrative structure didn't quite work. A couple of times the timing is such that the emotional impact of places and events is lessened because we don't know of it, yet. I also wish we could have spent a bit more time with the grassland tribes in the beginning.